Alastair Cook: I'm not in the same class as Don Bradman

England run machine Alastair Cook dismissed as fanciful the notion that his form stands comparison with Sir Don Bradman and the other great batsmen of Test cricket.

Indeed, the England opener tried to play down his achievement in scoring a 17th tonfor England at Cardiff, his fourth in six matches.

Cook followed his 189 in the Sydney Test with an unbeaten 129 in which he shared a 240 run partnership off 407 balls with Jonathan Trott, undefeated on 125 as England closed on 287-2 from 90 overs.

England trail Sri Lanka by 113 runs, but Cook remains convinced they can build a game-winning total on the fourth day.

In the runs: Trott and Cook

Dismissing the theory that he should be bracketed with Wally Hammond, Herbert Sutcliffe and Ken Barrington as England’s run-making glory boys, Cook said: ‘It’s nice to score a few and continue in the same form as I was in Australia. We have given ourselves a chance to win this game.

‘I was quite stodgy today. I got bogged down on a low, slow pitch. You can never master the art of scoring big runs, but the last couple of hundreds have been good, so the methods are beginning to work. We want to bat once and bat big to give ourselves a chance of winning.’

Commenting on his fourth hundred-plus partnership in eight Tests with Trott, Cooksaid: ‘We bat in what we call “fives”. We score five runs, then say we want to getanother five, and so on through.’

On Trott’s average of 66.34 — better than Graeme Pollock, Sutcliffe, Barrington, Everton Weekes and Hammond, Jack Hobbs and Len Hutton — Cook said: ‘He has been a revelation. His stats are phenomenal.’